Katie Kirby is a British author/illustrator who became an online sensation with her ‘mummy blog’ Hurrah for Gin (502K Facebook followers) featuring stick figure drawings and cynical/hilarious takes on parenting. After releasing several Hurrah for Gin books for adults, Kirby put her skills to use in the middle grade space, launching the diary-style Lottie Brooks series in 2021 and proving just as popular with tween girls as she is with middle-aged mums.
In The Seriously Epic Holiday of Lottie Brooks (book 8), Lottie is in Year 8 and spending the Easter holidays skiing with her old/new friend Amber (yes, there’s been drama), Amber’s dad Mark, his new girlfriend Tamara, and Tamara’s two kids. Of course, Lottie has never skied before, Tamara is dreadful, her son is a brat, and her daughter turns out to be… drumroll… Phoebe Pointy Nose, who clashed horribly with Lottie and Amber at a school camp the year before. And thus the stage for this book’s drama is set! It only gets better when Lottie’s ‘hot French ex-boyfriend’ Antoine shows up too. (Note: Lottie has a current boyfriend who is not on the trip; their relationship is mostly conducted via text message in this book and is pleasantly stable and drama-free.)
As in the earlier books, the text is interspersed with occasional stick figure illustrations, text message conversations and ‘thought of the day’ bubbles, and ends with Lottie’s ‘wordly wisdoms’ (lessons learnt). There’s a blank line after each paragraph, which means the pages have a decent amount of white space and can be read quite quickly. As it’s a 320-page book, these formatting choices keep young readers motivated and feeling that they’re making progress.
It is a testament to the popularity of this series (and the voracious reading appetite of its young audience) that there is currently a proliferation of tween girl diary-style series popping up ‘for fans of Lottie Brooks’. In the Australian space we have Melody Moss and Gracie Sparks, the British have also given us Izzy Dobson and Lila Mackay, and Rubie Fox is a similar offering from an American author.
Although clearly marketed at a young female audience (Lottie Brooks’s Essential Guide to Life includes a puberty guide for readers featuring the phrase ‘Journey into Womanhood’), there are certainly many boys who would enjoy the humour and relatability too. Perhaps the new British series Hari Kumar heralds an imminent run of tween boy diary-style books? (Note to anyone seeking other diary-style books with boy protagonists: a slightly older series called The Private Blog of Joe Cowley, referred to by some reviewers as ‘a modern Adrian Mole’, recently got my 13-year-old son’s stamp of approval and led to much laughing out loud!)
I recommend Lottie Brooks for readers aged 9+ who enjoy funny diary-style stories, relatable characters and middle grade melodrama. This series is an absolutely must-have for school libraries. However, I do recommend reading them in order; having only read books 1 and 8, I think I would have got much more enjoyment from the Phoebe and Antoine twists had I already been familiar with these characters.
Annaleise Byrd is the author of middle grade portal fantasies Losing the Plot and Down the Plot Hole, and the picture book You Are Not a Pup!
